I went to the library this weekend! Which was pretty exciting, honestly. It felt great to be back among the stacks again. Precautions in place, of course. For example, they limited access to one door, the one in the parking lot. A learning experience for me, because to be honest I didn’t know they even had a parking lot. In my defense, I’ve always parked in the lot behind the gym and walked. So, I went up to the front door, saw the sign that directed patrons to the parking lot door, realized I hadn’t the foggiest clue where that was, stalked my way around the building until I found the lot and the correct door, feeling like an unobservant dingbat the whole time.
The very nice librarian seated near the entrance outlined a few new policies, which included turning around any book I picked up but decided not to check out and replacing it on the shelf with the spine facing towards the wall so it could be easily spotted later and sterilized. Me being me, of course, didn’t want to put them to the trouble of having to hunt down books that I didn’t want to take home with me, I checked out every book I touched. My mind works in interesting ways. Having rapidly amassed quite a sizeable stack, on account of keeping every book I touched in a probably misguided attempt to make things easier on others, I checked out and made my way home. Upon arriving, I sat down to really take my time in going through my stack.
Which brings us to a At The End of My Yarn first, which is a review of a knitting book that I don’t actually like.
“If you love knitting, this is the book for you! Featuring 100 designs from six of Monica Russel’s books in the Twenty to Make series, it is packed full of quick and easy patterns. There are lots of projects that will appeal to competent beginners and more advanced knitters alike and they are all made in lovely natural yarns with a wide range of colors and designs. (…) Hand knit your own fabulous winter accessories and match them to your preferred colour scheme. Whatever the occasion, there is a wealth of inspiration here with projects that will make the perfect gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day and Christmas and will become an essential part of you winter wardrobe.” –Head-to-Toe Winter Knits by Monica Russel
Now, I’m the first to admit that the books I choose to review are usually ones I own, so my reviews are slanted towards books I enjoy and find helpful, naturally. I’ve done reviews on library books before, but they’ve been on books that I noticed on the shelf, thumbed through, then decided to check out. This one, I noticed the title, picked it up, flipped through it, saw a couple of designs I liked but nothing mind-blowing, and realized it was coming home with me whether I really wanted it or not.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some very solid designs in here. Also a bit of ‘divided by a common language’ because the book uses what I believe are British terms for accessories, which means I looked through the index, noticed all the headband patterns, thought ‘yeah sure, that’s what I really need while freezing my face off, something to keep my hair back, really a winter knit’, then looked at the pattern and saw it was what I would call an earmuff. The patterns themselves don’t call for a specific yarn from a specific manufacturer, which I didn’t realized until I read this book is actually a bit irritating. Now, I hardly ever use the suggested yarn when I knit a published pattern, but it’s very useful to know what the baseline yarn type is so I can look for something comparable that is in my stash already, or available in my area and not fifty bucks a skein because I ain’t made of money. What the patterns have is a description of the yarn itself, for example, the Heathland Wrist Warmers call for ‘1 ball of light worsted (DK/8-ply) merino yarn in variegated pink-green; 100g/232yd/212m’. While the pattern itself is a pair of completely serviceable worsted weight dense lace wrist warmers, I know the designer used a specific yarn, so why don’t they want us to know exactly what they used? That’s something I never thought I would find irritating, but I do. There are also no charts. For the majority of the patterns that isn’t an issue, but as a personal preference I like to know at a glance what the lace/cable etc. repeat will look like so I can know at a glance if I’ve messed up, or if I’m right on track, rather than having to pick through rows written out line-by-line. If you’re checking for errata in published patterns, which you should, it’ll save a lot of time and heartache, you’re more likely to run across a misprint in a row-by-row written pattern than a chart.
The patterns themselves, not taking into consideration my irritations with the yarn descriptions and lack of charting, are all basic, useful, decent designs. Nothing inspired or interesting from a technical standpoint, but solid. Kind of the the Reader’s Digest of knitting patterns. If you’re looking for a book of cold-weather accessories, and want to keep it simple, and are looking for a lot of designs to choose from, it’s hard to go wrong with this one.